William Beecher Scoville

Although he had a strong interest in automobiles throughout his life, his father pushed William toward a career in medicine.

After completing his undergraduate degree at Yale (B.A., 1928), he attended and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1932.

Scoville had a "hunch" that the hippocampus was responsible, and based on this erroneous guess, removed both of Molaison's hippocampi – sucking them out using a medical tool which comprises a cauterizing blade and suction vacuum, while the anesthetized but conscious Molaison sat in the operating chair.

Scoville consulted with a leading Canadian surgeon, Wilder Penfield at McGill University in Montreal, who, with psychologist Brenda Milner, had previously reported on two other patients’ memory deficits.

[3] In the book, in reference to Dr. Scoville removing both hippocampi without evidence they were the cause of H.M.'s epilepsy, the author quotes his grandfather as saying "I prefer action to thought, which is why I am a surgeon.